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Friday, 11 May 2012

Discount Armageddon - Book Review

Discount Armageddon (InCryptid #1)
by Seanan McGuire

What is it about:Ghoulies. Ghosties. Long-legged beasties. Things that go bump in the night... The Price family has spent generations studying the monsters of the world, working to protect them from humanity-and humanity from them. Enter Verity Price. Despite being trained from birth as a cryptozoologist, she'd rather dance a tango than tangle with a demon, and is spending a year in Manhattan while she pursues her career in professional ballroom dance. Sounds pretty simple, right? It would be, if it weren't for the talking mice, the telepathic mathematicians, the asbestos supermodels, and the trained monster-hunter sent by the Price family's old enemies, the Covenant of St. George. When a Price girl meets a Covenant boy, high stakes, high heels, and a lot of collateral damage are almost guaranteed. To complicate matters further, local cryptids are disappearing, strange lizard-men are appearing in the sewers, and someone's spreading rumors about a dragon sleeping underneath the city...

What did I think of it:
This book sounded like a nice read, but I will confess I was a bit afraid to pick it up. I had tried to read Feed, another book by McGuire (written under the name Mira Grant), and couldn't really get into that one, so I was afraid Discount Armageddon might be a miss as well. But then I was lucky enough to win this book in a giveaway, sparing me from making the difficult decision whether I should or shouldn't buy it.

And this is such a fun book!
It's full of action, humor and weird creatures.

It has a very different voice than Feed, much lighter and with a faster pacing. I really liked Verity, even though she's a bit too cocky at times and acts before thinking. And I fell totally in love with the Aeslin Mice Verity has living in her apartment. The mice might not have had any important role in the story, they were great in setting the mood for the story and in helping with the world building.

Storywise there were a few shortcuts and easy solutions (my bad guy detector was right on the money), but overall I really enjoyed this story and could easily ignore the minor flaws. The humorous style and the fast pacing made it an easy and fast read which was difficult to put down once I was invested in the story and characters.

I will most certainly keep an eye out for the next book in this series and I might give McGuire's October Daye series a try as well.

5 comments:

Discount Armageddon is more along the lines of her October Daye series than her Newsflesh series, so I think you'll probably enjoy hanging out with Toby. But I'm kinda biased. I have a sick writer/fangirl crush on Seanan. I'd read her grocery lists if I could.

Oh great I've just ordered it! I love the October Daye series and now I'm curious about this one. I confess I haven't read the feed series but I know they will be released in France as well. Thanks for the review I can't wait to start this one!

About Me

I'm part of a large family of pigs.
We all live with my owner in Groningen, the Netherlands.
I travel a lot with my owner and I post stories and pictures of my life and travels on my blog. I also have a blog where I post book reviews.